


Body Count

by enigmaticblue



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Chaos Theory, Community: hc_bingo, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 20:02:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5218979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticblue/pseuds/enigmaticblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Melinda May takes a body count and doesn't like the number.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Body Count

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the hc_bingo prompt "serial killers"

She has to know, is the thing. May has a tally of all the people she’s killed. It’s part of her SHIELD jacket, or at least the most classified version thereof. That jacket includes the girl in Bahrain, and collateral damage from various missions, and more than a few innocent bystanders.

 

Ironically, it doesn’t include Andrew, or her relationship with him, even if it should.

 

Andrew had access to that most classified file, had known the names of her kills and the reasons they were dead, and he’d known what each name cost her.

 

Now, she’s piecing together her own list—every name that Andrew, that Lash, had killed. Obviously, there’s no way of knowing who from the ATCU had died, not unless that woman shared the information, but May had the names from the ledger, and the names Lincoln had given them.

 

May’s complicated feelings toward Inhumans notwithstanding, it seems a special tragedy that so many of those from Afterlife had died. They had been what Coulson and Skye—no, Daisy—had most wanted. They had been well adjusted, had managed to blend in, and had control of their powers.

 

They had been innocent, and the number of kills Andrew racked up rivals her body count.

 

May had relied on Andrew to be the soft one, to be the kind one. She doesn’t think she has that softness in her; she never had.

 

Maybe, on some level, her darkness had infected him; maybe they were both killers at heart.

 

“Hey.”

 

May minimizes the screen, hiding the data and the list of names. “What.”

 

It’s not a question, but she has no intention of leaving an opening.

 

“Lincoln told me he’d given you a list of names,” Daisy says. “I thought you might want some company.”

 

“I don’t,” May replies without looking away from the screen.

 

Daisy—and really, May isn’t sure she’s ever going to get used to the name change—sits down. “Yeah, I get that, but going over that list of names isn’t going to help. No one blames you, you know.”

 

“That doesn’t make it less my responsibility,” she says, and feels the truth of the words as they leave her mouth.

 

If she hadn’t let Andrew go, if she hadn’t believed herself worthy of someone leaving without a word, maybe she would have figured it out sooner.

 

All the pieces were there; May just hadn’t been around to put it together.

 

“Do you blame me? Or Coulson?” Daisy asks, sounding less accusatory and more curious.

 

May has to admire how well she’s adjusted, how good of an agent she’s become. “No, of course not.”

 

“Dr. Garner and I worked closely together,” Daisy argues. “He had all the information. I should have seen that. I should have protected them.”

 

May hears the unspoken “my people.” Daisy is protective of the Inhumans, and she’d shown care for Andrew, even though he’d killed so many of her own.

 

“It’s not your fault.”

 

May doesn’t say that there isn’t anything Daisy could have done, although that’s true, too. If they’d put the pieces together sooner, if May’s feelings hadn’t been hurt so badly by his silent leave-taking, so many might have survived, but not Andrew.

 

His fate had been sealed the moment he’d been exposed to the Terragen mist. And if the _thing_ inside him hadn’t been born then, there’s no telling whether he might have been exposed some other time.

 

“Where’s Coulson?” May asks.

 

Daisy grimaces. “I don’t know.”

 

May finally faces her. “He didn’t follow me. That’s not like him. Not really.”

 

“I think there’s something going on between him and the dragon lady,” Daisy replies with a moue of distaste that all children probably display at the thought of their parents’ having sex.

 

Of course, May knows it goes beyond that. They’re working with the ATCU for now, but May isn’t stupid enough to completely trust them.

 

They’re just the best option out of a lot of bad ones.

 

“Are you back?” Daisy asks. “I mean, for good?”

 

May nods, putting a certainty she doesn’t feel in her expression. She’s not terribly certain of anything right now. “I’m back.”

 

“You want to spar?” Daisy asks. “That always makes me feel better.” When May hesitates, she adds, “It’s better than sitting here staring at data you can’t change.”

 

The list of names, the unquiet dead, will not change. Andrew’s condition is unlikely to change.

 

But there is a war going on, and first and foremost, May has always been a soldier.

 

“I think I’d like that,” she admits, and closes out the list.

 

The names of the dead may not change, but she might be able to prevent any but the deserving from joining them.


End file.
